Translate

Google+ Badge

Follow by Email

Search This Blog

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Functionalism (philosophy of mind)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviorism.
Its core idea is that mental states (beliefs, desires, being in pain,
etc.) are constituted solely by their functional role – that is, they
are causal relations to other mental states, sensory inputs, and
behavioral outputs.[1] Functionalism is a theoretical level between the physical implementation and behavioral output.[2] Therefore, it is different from its predecessors of Cartesian dualism (advocating independent mental and physical substances) and Skinnerian behaviorism and physicalism
(declaring only physical substances) because it is only concerned with
the effective functions of the brain, through its organization or its
"software programs".

Since mental states are identified by a functional role, they are
said to be realized on multiple levels; in other words, they are able to
be manifested in various systems, even perhaps computers, so long as
the system performs the appropriate functions. While computers are
physical devices with electronic substrate that perform computations on
inputs to give outputs, so brains are physical devices with neural
substrate that perform computations on inputs which produce behaviors.
While functionalism has its advantages, there have been several
arguments against it, claiming that it is an insufficient account of the
mind.

Multiple realizability

An important part of some accounts of functionalism is the idea of multiple realizability.
Since, according to standard functionalist theories, mental states are
the corresponding functional role, mental states can be sufficiently
explained without taking into account the underlying physical medium
(e.g. the brain, neurons, etc.) that realizes such states; one need only
take into account the higher-level functions in the cognitive system.
Since mental states are not limited to a particular medium, they can be
realized in multiple ways, including, theoretically, within
non-biological systems, such as computers. In other words, a
silicon-based machine could, in principle, have the same sort of mental
life that a human being has, provided that its cognitive system realized
the proper functional roles. Thus, mental states are individuated much
like a valve; a valve can be made of plastic or metal or whatever
material, as long as it performs the proper function (say, controlling
the flow of liquid through a tube by blocking and unblocking its
pathway).
However, there have been some functionalist theories that combine
with the identity theory of mind, which deny multiple realizability.
Such Functional Specification Theories (FSTs) (Levin, § 3.4), as they are called, were most notably developed by David Lewis[3] and David Malet Armstrong.[4]
According to FSTs, mental states are the particular "realizers" of the
functional role, not the functional role itself. The mental state of
belief, for example, just is whatever brain or neurological process that
realizes the appropriate belief function. Thus, unlike standard
versions of functionalism (often called Functional State Identity Theories),
FSTs do not allow for the multiple realizability of mental states,
because the fact that mental states are realized by brain states is
essential. What often drives this view is the belief that if we were to
encounter an alien race with a cognitive system composed of
significantly different material from humans' (e.g., silicon-based) but
performed the same functions as human mental states (e.g., they tend to
yell "Yowzas!" when poked with sharp objects, etc.) then we would say
that their type of mental state is perhaps similar to ours, but too
different to say it's the same. For some, this may be a disadvantage to
FSTs. Indeed, one of Hilary Putnam's[5][6]
arguments for his version of functionalism relied on the intuition that
such alien creatures would have the same mental states as humans do,
and that the multiple realizability of standard functionalism makes it a
better theory of mind.

Types of functionalism

Machine-state functionalism

The broad position of "functionalism" can be articulated in many
different varieties. The first formulation of a functionalist theory of
mind was put forth by Hilary Putnam.[5][6] This formulation, which is now called machine-state functionalism, or just machine functionalism, was inspired by the analogies which Putnam and others noted between the mind and the theoretical "machines" or computers capable of computing any given algorithm which were developed by Alan Turing (called Universal Turing machines).

In non-technical terms, a Turing machine can be visualized as an
indefinitely and infinitely long tape divided into rectangles (the
memory) with a box-shaped scanning device that sits over and scans one
component of the memory at a time. Each unit is either blank (B) or has a 1 written on it. These are the inputs to the machine. The possible outputs are:

Halt: Do nothing.

R: move one square to the right.

L: move one square to the left.

B: erase whatever is on the square.

1: erase whatever is on the square and print a '1.

An extremely simple example of a Turing machine which writes out the
sequence '111' after scanning three blank squares and then stops as
specified by the following machine table:

State One

State Two

State Three

B

write 1; stay in state 1

write 1; stay in state 2

write 1; stay in state 3

1

go right; go to state 2

go right; go to state 3

[halt]

This table states that if the machine is in state one and scans a blank square (B), it will print a 1 and remain in state one. If it is in state one and reads a 1, it will move one square to the right and also go into state two. If it is in state two and reads a B, it will print a 1 and stay in state two. If it is in state two and reads a 1, it will move one square to the right and go into state three. If it is in state three and reads a B, it prints a 1 and remains in state three. Finally, if it is in state three and reads a 1, then it will stay in state three.

The essential point to consider here is the nature of the states
of the Turing machine. Each state can be defined exclusively in terms
of its relations to the other states as well as inputs and outputs.
State one, for example, is simply the state in which the machine, if it
reads a B, writes a 1 and stays in that state, and in which, if it reads a 1,
it moves one square to the right and goes into a different state. This
is the functional definition of state one; it is its causal role in the
overall system. The details of how it accomplishes what it accomplishes
and of its material constitution are completely irrelevant.

According to machine-state functionalism, the nature of a mental
state is just like the nature of the automaton states described above.
Just as state one simply is the state in which, given an input B,
such and such happens, so being in pain is the state which disposes one
to cry "ouch", become distracted, wonder what the cause is, and so
forth.

Psychofunctionalism

A second form of functionalism is based on the rejection of behaviorist
theories in psychology and their replacement with empirical cognitive
models of the mind. This view is most closely associated with Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn and has been labeled psychofunctionalism.

The fundamental idea of psychofunctionalism is that psychology is an
irreducibly complex science and that the terms that we use to describe
the entities and properties of the mind in our best psychological
theories cannot be redefined in terms of simple behavioral dispositions,
and further, that such a redefinition would not be desirable or salient
were it achievable. Psychofunctionalists view psychology as employing
the same sorts of irreducibly teleological
or purposive explanations as the biological sciences. Thus, for
example, the function or role of the heart is to pump blood, that of the
kidney is to filter it and to maintain certain chemical balances and so
on—this is what accounts for the purposes of scientific explanation and
taxonomy. There may be an infinite variety of physical realizations for
all of the mechanisms, but what is important is only their role in the
overall biological theory. In an analogous manner, the role of mental
states, such as belief and desire, is determined by the functional or
causal role that is designated for them within our best scientific psychological theory. If some mental state which is postulated by folk psychology
(e.g. hysteria) is determined not to have any fundamental role in
cognitive psychological explanation, then that particular state may be
considered not to exist . On the other hand, if it turns out that there
are states which theoretical cognitive psychology posits as necessary
for explanation of human behavior but which are not foreseen by ordinary
folk psychological language, then these entities or states exist.

Analytic functionalism

A third form of functionalism is concerned with the meanings of
theoretical terms in general. This view is most closely associated with David Lewis and is often referred to as analytic functionalism or conceptual functionalism.
The basic idea of analytic functionalism is that theoretical terms are
implicitly defined by the theories in whose formulation they occur and
not by intrinsic properties of the phonemes they comprise. In the case
of ordinary language terms, such as "belief", "desire", or "hunger", the
idea is that such terms get their meanings from our common-sense "folk
psychological" theories about them, but that such conceptualizations are
not sufficient to withstand the rigor imposed by materialistic theories
of reality and causality. Such terms are subject to conceptual analyses
which take something like the following form:

Mental state M is the state that is preconceived by P and causes Q.

For example, the state of pain is caused by sitting on a tack and causes
loud cries, and higher order mental states of anger and resentment
directed at the careless person who left a tack lying around. These
sorts of functional definitions in terms of causal roles are claimed to
be analytic and a priori
truths about the submental states and the (largely fictitious)
propositional attitudes they describe.
Hence, its proponents are known
as analytic or conceptual functionalists. The essential
difference between analytic and psychofunctionalism is that the latter
emphasizes the importance of laboratory observation and experimentation
in the determination of which mental state terms and concepts are
genuine and which functional identifications may be considered to be
genuinely contingent and a posteriori identities. The former, on the other hand, claims that such identities are necessary and not subject to empirical scientific investigation.

Homuncular functionalism

Homuncular functionalism was developed largely by Daniel Dennett and has been advocated by William Lycan. It arose in response to the challenges that Ned Block's China Brain (a.k.a. Chinese nation) and John Searle's Chinese room
thought experiments presented for the more traditional forms of
functionalism (see below under "Criticism"). In attempting to overcome
the conceptual difficulties that arose from the idea of a nation full of
Chinese people wired together, each person working as a single neuron
to produce in the wired-together whole the functional mental states of
an individual mind, many functionalists simply bit the bullet, so to
speak, and argued that such a Chinese nation would indeed possess all of
the qualitative and intentional properties of a mind; i.e. it would
become a sort of systemic or collective mind with propositional
attitudes and other mental characteristics.
Whatever the worth of this
latter hypothesis, it was immediately objected that it entailed an unacceptable sort of mind-mind supervenience: the systemic
mind which somehow emerged at the higher-level must necessarily
supervene on the individual minds of each individual member of the
Chinese nation, to stick to Block's formulation. But this would seem to
put into serious doubt, if not directly contradict, the fundamental idea
of the supervenience thesis: there can be no change in the mental realm
without some change in the underlying physical substratum. This can be
easily seen if we label the set of mental facts that occur at the higher-level M1 and the set of mental facts that occur at the lower-level M2. Given the transitivity of supervenience, if M1 supervenes on M2, and M2 supervenes on P (physical base), then M1 and M2 both supervene on P, even though they are (allegedly) totally different sets of mental facts.

Since mind-mind supervenience seemed to have become acceptable in
functionalist circles, it seemed to some that the only way to resolve
the puzzle was to postulate the existence of an entire hierarchical
series of mind levels (analogous to homunculi)
which became less and less sophisticated in terms of functional
organization and physical composition all the way down to the level of
the physico-mechanical neuron or group of neurons. The homunculi at each
level, on this view, have authentic mental properties but become
simpler and less intelligent as one works one's way down the hierarchy.

Functionalism and physicalism

There is much confusion about the sort of relationship that is
claimed to exist (or not exist) between the general thesis of
functionalism and physicalism. It has often been claimed that functionalism somehow "disproves" or falsifies physicalism tout court
(i.e. without further explanation or description). On the other hand,
most philosophers of mind who are functionalists claim to be
physicalists—indeed, some of them, such as David Lewis, have claimed to
be strict reductionist-type physicalists.

Functionalism is fundamentally what Ned Block has called a broadly metaphysical thesis as opposed to a narrowly ontological one. That is, functionalism is not so much concerned with what there is
than with what it is that characterizes a certain type of mental state,
e.g. pain, as the type of state that it is. Previous attempts to answer
the mind-body problem have all tried to resolve it by answering both
questions: dualism says there are two substances and that mental states
are characterized by their immateriality; behaviorism claimed that
there was one substance and that mental states were behavioral
disposition; physicalism asserted the existence of just one substance
and characterized the mental states as physical states (as in "pain =
C-fiber firings").

On this understanding, type physicalism can be seen as
incompatible with functionalism, since it claims that what characterizes
mental states (e.g. pain) is that they are physical in nature, while
functionalism says that what characterizes pain is its functional/causal
role and its relationship with yelling "ouch", etc. However, any weaker
sort of physicalism which makes the simple ontological claim that
everything that exists is made up of physical matter is perfectly
compatible with functionalism. Moreover, most functionalists who are
physicalists require that the properties that are quantified over in
functional definitions be physical properties. Hence, they are physicalists, even though the general thesis of functionalism itself does not commit them to being so.

In the case of David Lewis, there is a distinction in the concepts of "having pain" (a rigid designator
true of the same things in all possible worlds) and just "pain" (a
non-rigid designator). Pain, for Lewis, stands for something like the
definite description "the state with the causal role x". The referent of
the description in humans is a type of brain state to be determined by
science. The referent among silicon-based life forms is something else.
The referent of the description among angels is some immaterial,
non-physical state. For Lewis, therefore, local type-physical reductions are possible and compatible with conceptual functionalism. (See also Lewis's Mad pain and Martian pain.) There seems to be some confusion between types and tokens that needs to be cleared up in the functionalist analysis.

Criticism

China brain

Ned Block[7] argues against the functionalist proposal of multiple realizability,
where hardware implementation is irrelevant because only the functional
level is important. The "China brain" or "Chinese nation" thought
experiment involves supposing that the entire nation of China
systematically organizes itself to operate just like a brain, with each
individual acting as a neuron (forming what has come to be called a
"Blockhead"). According to functionalism, so long as the people are
performing the proper functional roles, with the proper causal relations
between inputs and outputs, the system will be a real mind, with mental
states, consciousness, and so on. However, Block argues, this is
patently absurd, so there must be something wrong with the thesis of
functionalism since it would allow this to be a legitimate description
of a mind.
Some functionalists believe China would have qualia but that due to the size it is impossible to imagine China being conscious.[8] Indeed, it may be the case that we are constrained by our theory of mind[9]
and will never be able to understand what Chinese-nation consciousness
is like. Therefore, if functionalism is true either qualia will exist
across all hardware or will not exist at all but are illusory.[10]

The Chinese room

The Chinese room argument by John Searle[11]
is a direct attack on the claim that thought can be represented as a
set of functions. The thought experiment asserts that it is possible to
mimic intelligent action without any interpretation or understanding
through the use of a purely functional system. In short, Searle
describes a person who only speaks English who is in a room with only
Chinese symbols in baskets and a rule book in English for moving the
symbols around. The person is then ordered by people outside of the room
to follow the rule book for sending certain symbols out of the room
when given certain symbols. Further suppose that the people outside of
the room are Chinese speakers and are communicating with the person
inside via the Chinese symbols. According to Searle, it would be absurd
to claim that the English speaker inside knows Chinese simply based on
these syntactic processes. This thought experiment attempts to show that
systems which operate merely on syntactic processes (inputs and
outputs, based on algorithms) cannot realize any semantics (meaning) or
intentionality (aboutness). Thus, Searle attacks the idea that thought
can be equated with following a set of syntactic rules; that is,
functionalism is an insufficient theory of the mind.
As noted above, in connection with Block's Chinese nation, many functionalists responded to Searle's thought experiment
by suggesting that there was a form of mental activity going on at a
higher level than the man in the Chinese room could comprehend (the
so-called "system reply"); that is, the system does know Chinese. Of
course, Searle responds that there is nothing more than syntax going on
at the higher-level as well, so this reply is subject to the same
initial problems. Furthermore, Searle suggests the man in the room could
simply memorize the rules and symbol relations. Again, though he would
convincingly mimic communication, he would be aware only of the symbols
and rules, not of the meaning behind them.

Inverted spectrum

Another main criticism of functionalism is the inverted spectrum or inverted qualia scenario, most specifically proposed as an objection to functionalism by Ned Block.[7][12]
This thought experiment involves supposing that there is a person, call
her Jane, that is born with a condition which makes her see the
opposite spectrum of light that is normally perceived. Unlike "normal"
people, Jane sees the color violet as yellow, orange as blue, and so
forth. So, suppose, for example, that you and Jane are looking at the
same orange. While you perceive the fruit as colored orange, Jane sees
it as colored blue. However, when asked what color the piece of fruit
is, both you and Jane will report "orange". In fact, one can see that
all of your behavioral as well as functional relations to colors will be
the same. Jane will, for example, properly obey traffic signs just as
any other person would, even though this involves the color perception.
Therefore, the argument goes, since there can be two people who are
functionally identical, yet have different mental states (differing in
their qualitative or phenomenological aspects), functionalism is not
robust enough to explain individual differences in qualia.[13]David Chalmers tries to show[14] that even though mental content cannot be fully accounted for in functional terms, there is nevertheless a nomological correlation
between mental states and functional states in this world. A
silicon-based robot, for example, whose functional profile matched our
own, would have to be fully conscious. His argument for this claim takes the form of a reductio ad absurdum.
The general idea is that since it would be very unlikely for a
conscious human being to experience a change in its qualia which it
utterly fails to notice, mental content and functional profile appear to
be inextricably bound together, at least in the human case. If the
subject's qualia were to change, we would expect the subject to notice,
and therefore his functional profile to follow suit. A similar argument
is applied to the notion of absent qualia.
In this case, Chalmers argues that it would be very unlikely for a
subject to experience a fading of his qualia which he fails to notice
and respond to. This, coupled with the independent assertion that a
conscious being's functional profile just could be maintained,
irrespective of its experiential state, leads to the conclusion that the
subject of these experiments would remain fully conscious. The problem
with this argument, however, as Brian G. Crabb (2005) has observed, is
that it begs the central question: How could Chalmers know that
functional profile can be preserved, for example while the conscious
subject's brain is being supplanted with a silicon substitute, unless he
already assumes that the subject's possibly changing qualia would not
be a determining factor? And while changing or fading qualia in a
conscious subject might force changes in its functional profile, this
tells us nothing about the case of a permanently inverted or unconscious
robot. A subject with inverted qualia from birth would have nothing to
notice or adjust to. Similarly, an unconscious functional simulacrum of
ourselves (a zombie) would have no experiential changes to notice or
adjust to. Consequently, Crabb argues, Chalmers' "fading qualia" and
"dancing qualia" arguments fail to establish that cases of permanently
inverted or absent qualia are nomologically impossible.

A related critique of the inverted spectrum argument is that it
assumes that mental states (differing in their qualitative or
phenomenological aspects) can be independent of the functional relations
in the brain. Thus, it begs the question
of functional mental states: its assumption denies the possibility of
functionalism itself, without offering any independent justification for
doing so. (Functionalism says that mental states are produced by the
functional relations in the brain.) This same type of problem—that there
is no argument, just an antithetical assumption at their base—can also
be said of both the Chinese room and the Chinese nation arguments.
Notice, however, that Crabb's response to Chalmers does not commit this
fallacy: His point is the more restricted observation that even if
inverted or absent qualia turn out to be nomologically impossible, and
it is perfectly possible that we might subsequently discover this fact
by other means, Chalmers' argument fails to demonstrate that they are
impossible.

Twin Earth

The Twin Earth thought experiment, introduced by Hilary Putnam,[15]
is responsible for one of the main arguments used against
functionalism, although it was originally intended as an argument
against semantic internalism.
The thought experiment is simple and runs as follows. Imagine a Twin
Earth which is identical to Earth in every way but one: water does not
have the chemical structure H₂O, but rather some other structure, say
XYZ. It is critical, however, to note that XYZ on Twin Earth is still
called "water" and exhibits all the same macro-level properties that H₂O
exhibits on Earth (i.e., XYZ is also a clear drinkable liquid that is
in lakes, rivers, and so on). Since these worlds are identical in every
way except in the underlying chemical structure of water, you and your
Twin Earth doppelgänger
see exactly the same things, meet exactly the same people, have exactly
the same jobs, behave exactly the same way, and so on. In other words,
since you share the same inputs, outputs, and relations between other
mental states, you are functional duplicates. So, for example, you both
believe that water is wet. However, the content of your mental state of
believing that water is wet differs from your duplicate's because your
belief is of H₂O, while your duplicate's is of XYZ.
Therefore, so the
argument goes, since two people can be functionally identical, yet have
different mental states, functionalism cannot sufficiently account for
all mental states.

Most defenders of functionalism initially responded to this argument
by attempting to maintain a sharp distinction between internal and
external content. The internal contents of propositional attitudes, for
example, would consist exclusively in those aspects of them which have
no relation with the external world and which bear the necessary
functional/causal properties that allow for relations with other
internal mental states. Since no one has yet been able to formulate a
clear basis or justification for the existence of such a distinction in
mental contents, however, this idea has generally been abandoned in
favor of externalist causal theories of mental contents (also known as informational semantics). Such a position is represented, for example, by Jerry Fodor's
account of an "asymmetric causal theory" of mental content. This view
simply entails the modification of functionalism to include within its
scope a very broad interpretation of input and outputs to include the
objects that are the causes of mental representations in the external
world.

The twin earth argument hinges on the assumption that experience with
an imitation water would cause a different mental state than experience
with natural water. However, since no one would notice the difference
between the two waters, this assumption is likely false. Further, this
basic assumption is directly antithetical to functionalism; and,
thereby, the twin earth argument does not constitute a genuine argument:
as this assumption entails a flat denial of functionalism itself (which
would say that the two waters would not produce different mental
states, because the functional relationships would remain unchanged).

Meaning holism

Another common criticism of functionalism is that it implies a radical form of semantic holism. Block and Fodor[12] referred to this as the damn/darn problem.
The difference between saying "damn" or "darn" when one smashes one's
finger with a hammer can be mentally significant. But since these
outputs are, according to functionalism, related to many (if not all)
internal mental states, two people who experience the same pain and
react with different outputs must share little (perhaps nothing) in
common in any of their mental states. But this is counter-intuitive; it
seems clear that two people share something significant in their mental
states of being in pain if they both smash their finger with a hammer,
whether or not they utter the same word when they cry out in pain.

Another possible solution to this problem is to adopt a moderate (or
molecularist) form of holism. But even if this succeeds in the case of
pain, in the case of beliefs and meaning, it faces the difficulty of
formulating a distinction between relevant and non-relevant contents
(which can be difficult to do without invoking an analytic-synthetic
distinction, as many seek to avoid).

Triviality arguments

Hilary Putnam,[16]John Searle,[17] and others[18][19]
have offered arguments that functionalism is trivial, i.e. that the
internal structures functionalism tries to discuss turn out to be
present everywhere, so that either functionalism turns out to reduce to behaviorism, or to complete triviality and therefore a form of panpsychism.
These arguments typically use the assumption that physics leads to a
progression of unique states, and that functionalist realization is
present whenever there is a mapping from the proposed set of mental
states to physical states of the system. Given that the states of a
physical system are always at least slightly unique, such a mapping will
always exist, so any system is a mind. Formulations of functionalism
which stipulate absolute requirements on interaction with external
objects (external to the functional account, meaning not defined
functionally) are reduced to behaviorism instead of absolute triviality,
because the input-output behavior is still required.

Peter Godfrey-Smith has argued further[20]
that such formulations can still be reduced to triviality if they
accept a somewhat innocent-seeming additional assumption. The assumption
is that adding a transducer layer, that is, an input-output
system, to an object should not change whether that object has mental
states. The transducer layer is restricted to producing behavior
according to a simple mapping, such as a lookup table, from inputs to
actions on the system, and from the state of the system to outputs.
However, since the system will be in unique states at each moment and at
each possible input, such a mapping will always exist so there will be a
transducer layer which will produce whatever physical behavior is
desired.

Godfrey-Smith believes that these problems can be addressed using causality,
but that it may be necessary to posit a continuum between objects being
minds and not being minds rather than an absolute distinction.
Furthermore, constraining the mappings seems to require either
consideration of the external behavior as in behaviorism, or discussion
of the internal structure of the realization as in identity theory; and
though multiple realizability does not seem to be lost, the
functionalist claim of the autonomy of high-level functional description
becomes questionable.[20]

Hard problem of consciousness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences — how sensations acquire characteristics, such as colours and tastes.[1]David Chalmers, who introduced the term "hard problem" of consciousness,[2]
contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to
discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus
attention, etc. Easy problems are easy because all that is required for
their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function.
That is, their proposed solutions, regardless of how complex or poorly
understood they may be, can be entirely consistent with the modern
materialistic conception of natural phenomena. Chalmers claims that the
problem of experience is distinct from this set, and he argues that the
problem of experience will "persist even when the performance of all the
relevant functions is explained".[3]

The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial and has been disputed by some philosophers.[4][5]
Providing an answer to this question could lie in understanding the
roles that physical processes play in creating consciousness and the
extent to which these processes create our subjective qualities of
experience.[3]

Several questions about consciousness must be resolved in order to
acquire a full understanding of it. These questions include, but are not
limited to, whether being conscious could be wholly described in
physical terms, such as the aggregation of neural processes in the
brain. If consciousness cannot be explained exclusively by
physical events, it must transcend the capabilities of physical systems
and require an explanation of nonphysical means. For philosophers who
assert that consciousness is nonphysical in nature, there remains a
question about what outside of physical theory is required to explain
consciousness.

Formulation of the problem

Chalmers' formulation

It is
undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the
question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is
perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual
and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory
experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can
we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental
image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience
arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and
how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich
inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and
yet it does.

”

Easy problems

Chalmers contrasts the Hard Problem with a number of (relatively)
Easy Problems that consciousness presents. (He emphasizes that what the
easy problems have in common is that they all represent some ability, or
the performance of some function or behavior).

the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;

Historical predecessors

Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends
upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by
means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so
constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be
conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so
that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on
examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and
never anything by which to explain a perception.[7]

how it is that any thing so remarkable as a state of consciousness
comes about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as
unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his
lamp.[9]

Consciousness is fundamental or elusive

Some philosophers, including David Chalmers and Alfred North Whitehead, argue that conscious experience is a fundamental constituent of the universe, a form of panpsychism sometimes referred to as panexperientialism.
Chalmers argues that a "rich inner life" is not logically reducible to
the functional properties of physical processes. He states that
consciousness must be described using nonphysical means. This
description involves a fundamental ingredient capable of clarifying
phenomena that has not been explained using physical means. Use of this
fundamental property, Chalmers argues, is necessary to explain certain
functions of the world, much like other fundamental features, such as
mass and time, and to explain significant principles in nature.

Thomas Nagel
has posited that experiences are essentially subjective (accessible
only to the individual undergoing them), while physical states are
essentially objective (accessible to multiple individuals). So at this
stage, we have no idea what it could even mean to claim that an
essentially subjective state just is an essentially non-subjective state. In other words, we have no idea of what reductivism really amounts to.[11]

Deflationary accounts

Some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett,[4]Stanislas Dehaene,[5] and Peter Hacker,[13]
oppose the idea that there is a hard problem. These theorists argue
that once we really come to understand what consciousness is, we will
realize that the hard problem is unreal. For instance, Dennett asserts
that the so-called hard problem will be solved in the process of
answering the easy ones.[4]
In contrast with Chalmers, he argues that consciousness is not a
fundamental feature of the universe and instead will eventually be fully
explained by natural phenomena. Instead of involving the nonphysical,
he says, consciousness merely plays tricks on people so that it appears
nonphysical—in other words, it simply seems like it requires nonphysical
features to account for its powers. In this way, Dennett compares
consciousness to stage magic and its capability to create extraordinary
illusions out of ordinary things.[14]

To show how people might be commonly fooled into overstating the
powers of consciousness, Dennett describes a normal phenomenon called change blindness, a visual process that involves failure to detect scenery changes in a series of alternating images.[15]
He uses this concept to argue that the overestimation of the brain's
visual processing implies that the conception of our consciousness is
likely not as pervasive as we make it out to be. He claims that this
error of making consciousness more mysterious than it is could be a
misstep in any developments toward an effective explanatory theory.
Critics such as Galen Strawson reply that, in the case of consciousness,
even a mistaken experience retains the essential face of experience
that needs to be explained, contra Dennett.

To address the question of the hard problem, or how and why physical
processes give rise to experience, Dennett states that the phenomenon of
having experience is nothing more than the performance of functions or
the production of behavior, which can also be referred to as the easy
problems of consciousness.[4]
He states that consciousness itself is driven simply by these
functions, and to strip them away would wipe out any ability to identify
thoughts, feelings, and consciousness altogether. So, unlike Chalmers
and other dualists, Dennett says that the easy problems and the hard
problem cannot be separated from each other. To him, the hard problem of
experience is included among—not separate from—the easy problems, and
therefore they can only be explained together as a cohesive unit.[14]

Dehaene's argument has similarities with those of Dennett. He says
Chalmers' 'easy problems of consciousness' are actually the hard
problems and the 'hard problems' are based only upon intuitions that,
according to Dehaene, are continually shifting as understanding evolves.
"Once our intuitions are educated ...Chalmers' hard problem will
evaporate" and "qualia...will be viewed as a peculiar idea of the prescientific era, much like vitalism...[Just
as science dispatched vitalism] the science of consciousness will eat
away at the hard problem of consciousness until it vanishes."[5]

Like Dennett, Peter Hacker
argues that the hard problem is fundamentally incoherent and that
"consciousness studies," as it exists today, is "literally a total waste
of time:"[13]

“The whole endeavour of the consciousness studies community is
absurd – they are in pursuit of a chimera. They misunderstand the nature
of consciousness. The conception of consciousness which they have is
incoherent. The questions they are asking don’t make sense. They have to
go back to the drawing board and start all over again.”

Critics of Dennett's approach, such as David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel,
argue that Dennett's argument misses the point of the inquiry by merely
re-defining consciousness as an external property and ignoring the
subjective aspect completely. This has led detractors to refer to
Dennett's book Consciousness Explained as Consciousness Ignored or Consciousness Explained Away.[4] Dennett discussed this at the end of his book with a section entitled Consciousness Explained or Explained Away?[15]

Glenn Carruthers and Elizabeth Schier argue that the main arguments for the existence of a hard problem -- philosophical zombies, Mary's room, and Nagel's bats
-- are only persuasive if one already assumes that "consciousness must
be independent of the structure and function of mental states, i.e. that
there is a hard problem." Hence, the arguments beg the question.
The authors suggest that "instead of letting our conclusions on the
thought experiments guide our theories of consciousness, we should let
our theories of consciousness guide our conclusions from the thought
experiments."[16]
Contrary to this line of argument, Chalmers says: "Some may be led to
deny the possibility [of zombies] in order to make some theory come out
right, but the justification of such theories should ride on the
question of possibility, rather than the other way round".[17]:96

A notable deflationary account is the Higher-Order Thought theories of consciousness.[18][19]Peter Carruthers
discusses "recognitional concepts of experience", that is, "a capacity
to recognize [a] type of experience when it occurs in one's own mental
life", and suggests such a capacity does not depend upon qualia.[20] Though the most common arguments against deflationary accounts and eliminative materialism is the argument from qualia,
and that conscious experiences are irreducible to physical states - or
that current popular definitions of "physical" are incomplete - the
objection follows that the one and same reality can appear in different
ways, and that the numerical difference of these ways is consistent with
a unitary mode of existence of the reality. Critics of the deflationary
approach object that qualia are a case where a single reality cannot
have multiple appearances. As John Searle points out: "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality."[21]

Massimo Pigliucci
distances himself from eliminativism, but he insists that the hard
problem is still misguided, resulting from a "category mistake":[22]

Of course an explanation isn't the same as an experience, but that’s
because the two are completely independent categories, like colors and
triangles. It is obvious that I cannot experience what it is like to be
you, but I can potentially have a complete explanation of how and why it
is possible to be you.

A few theoretical physicists have argued that classical physics is intrinsically incapable of explaining the holistic aspects of consciousness, whereas quantum mechanics can. The idea that quantum theory has something to do with the workings of the mind go back to Eugene Wigner, who assumed that the wave function collapses
due to its interaction with consciousness. However, most contemporary
physicists and philosophers consider the arguments for an important role
of quantum phenomena to be unconvincing.[2] Physicist Victor Stenger
characterized quantum consciousness as a "myth" having "no scientific
basis" that "should take its place along with gods, unicorns and
dragons."[3]

Description of main quantum mind approaches

David Bohm

David Bohm took the view that quantum theory and relativity
contradicted one another, and that this contradiction implied that
there existed a more fundamental level in the physical universe.[7]
He claimed that both quantum theory and relativity pointed towards this
deeper theory, which he formulated in terms of a quantum field theory.
This more fundamental level was proposed to represent an undivided
wholeness and an implicate order, from which arises the explicate order
of the universe as we experience it.

Bohm's proposed implicate order applies both to matter and
consciousness, and he suggests that it could explain the relationship
between them. Mind and matter are here seen as projections into our
explicate order from the underlying reality of the implicate order. Bohm
claims that when we look at the matter in space, we can see nothing in
these concepts that helps us to understand consciousness.
In trying to describe the nature of consciousness, Bohm discusses the
experience of listening to music. He believed that the feeling of
movement and change that make up our experience of music derives from
both the immediate past and the present both being held in the brain
together, with the notes from the past seen as transformations rather
than memories. The notes that were implicate in the immediate past are
seen as becoming explicate in the present. Bohm views this as
consciousness emerging from the implicate order.

Bohm sees the movement, change or flow and also the coherence of
experiences, such as listening to music as a manifestation of the
implicate order. He claims to derive evidence for this from the work of Jean Piaget[8]
in studying infants. He states that these studies show that young
children have to learn about time and space, because they are part of
the explicate order, but have a "hard-wired" understanding of movement,
because it is part of the implicate order. He compares this
"hard-wiring" to Chomsky's theory that grammar is "hard-wired" into young human brains.

In his writings, Bohm never proposed any specific brain mechanism by
which his implicate order could emerge in a way that was relevant to
consciousness, nor any means by which the propositions could be tested
or falsified.[citation needed]

Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff

Theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff collaborated to produce the theory known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR).
Penrose and Hameroff initially developed their ideas separately, and
only later collaborated to produce Orch-OR in the early 1990s. The
theory was reviewed and updated by the original authors in late 2013.[9][10]
Penrose's controversial argument began from Gödel's incompleteness theorems. In his first book on consciousness, The Emperor's New Mind
(1989), he argued that while a formal proof system cannot prove its own
inconsistency, Gödel-unprovable results are provable by human
mathematicians.[citation needed]
He took this disparity to mean that human mathematicians are not
describable as formal proof systems, and are not therefore running a
computable algorithm.[citation needed]

Penrose determined that wave function collapse
was the only possible physical basis for a non-computable process.
Dissatisfied with its randomness, Penrose proposed a new form of wave
function collapse that occurred in isolation, called objective reduction.
He suggested that each quantum superposition has its own piece of
spacetime curvature, and when these become separated by more than one Planck length, they become unstable and collapse.[citation needed] Penrose suggested that objective reduction represented neither randomness nor algorithmic processing, but instead a non-computable influence in spacetime geometry from which mathematical understanding and, by later extension, consciousness derived.[citation needed]

Originally, Penrose lacked a detailed proposal for how quantum
processing could be implemented in the brain. However, Hameroff read
Penrose's work, and suggested that microtubules would be suitable candidates.[citation needed]

Microtubules are composed of tubulin protein dimer subunits. The
tubulin dimers each have hydrophobic pockets that are 8 nm apart, and
which may contain delocalised pi electrons. Tubulins have other smaller
non-polar regions that contain pi electron-rich indole rings separated
by only about 2 nm. Hameroff proposes that these electrons are close
enough to become quantum entangled.[11] Hameroff originally suggested the tubulin-subunit electrons would form a Bose–Einstein condensate, but this was discredited.[12]
He then proposed a Frohlich condensate, a hypothetical coherent
oscillation of dipolar molecules. However, this too has been
experimentally discredited.[13]

Furthermore, he proposed that condensates in one neuron could extend to many others via gap junctions
between neurons, thus forming a macroscopic quantum feature across an
extended area of the brain. When the wave function of this extended
condensate collapsed, it was suggested to non-computationally access
mathematical understanding and ultimately conscious experience, that are
hypothetically embedded in the geometry of spacetime.[citation needed]

However, Orch-OR made numerous false biological predictions, and is
considered to be an extremely poor model of brain physiology. The
proposed predominance of 'A' lattice microtubules, more suitable for
information processing, was falsified by Kikkawa et al.,[14][15]
who showed that all in vivo microtubules have a 'B' lattice and a seam.
The proposed existence of gap junctions between neurons and glial cells
was also falsified.[16] Orch-OR predicted that microtubule coherence reaches the synapses via dendritic lamellar bodies (DLBs), however De Zeeuw et al. proved this impossible,[17] by showing that DLBs are located micrometers away from gap junctions.[18]

Umezawa, Vitiello, Freeman, Kak

Hiroomi Umezawa and collaborators proposed a quantum field theory of memory storage. Giuseppe Vitiello and Walter Freeman
have proposed a dialog model of the mind, where this dialog takes place
between the classical and the quantum parts of the brain.[21][22] Quantum field theory models of brain dynamics are fundamentally different from the Penrose-Hameroff theory. Subhash Kak has proposed that the physical substratum to neural networks has a quantum basis,[23] but he also points out that the quantum mind will still have machine-like limitations.[24] He points to a role for quantum theory in the distinction between machine intelligence and biological intelligence.[25][26]

Henry Stapp

Henry Stapp
favors the idea that quantum waves are reduced only when they interact
with consciousness. He argues from the Orthodox Quantum Mechanics of John von Neumann
that the quantum state collapses when the observer selects one among
the alternative quantum possibilities as a basis for future action. The
collapse, therefore, takes place in the expectation that the observer
associated with the state.[citation needed]

His theory of how mind may interact with matter via quantum processes in the brain differs from that of Penrose and Hameroff.[27]

Criticism by Max Tegmark

The main argument against the quantum mind proposition is that
quantum states in the brain would decohere before they reached a spatial
or temporal scale at which they could be useful for neural processing,
although in photosynthetic organisms quantum coherence is involved in
the efficient transfer of energy, within the timescales calculated by
Tegmark.Quantum biology[28] This argument was elaborated by the physicist, Max Tegmark.
Based on his calculations, Tegmark concluded that quantum systems in
the brain decohere at sub-picosecond timescales commonly assumed to be
too short to control brain function.[29][30]

Penrose is known for his work in mathematical physics, in particular for his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their contribution to our understanding of the universe.[1]

As a student in 1954, Penrose was attending a conference in Amsterdam
when by chance he came across an exhibition of Escher's work. Soon he
was trying to conjure up impossible figures of his own and discovered
the tri-bar
– a triangle that looks like a real, solid three-dimensional object,
but isn't. Together with his father, a physicist and mathematician,
Penrose went on to design a staircase that simultaneously loops up and
down. An article followed and a copy was sent to Escher. Completing a
cyclical flow of creativity, the Dutch master of geometrical illusions
was inspired to produce his two masterpieces.[4]

In 1967, Penrose invented the twistor theory which maps geometric objects in Minkowski space into the 4-dimensional complex space with the metric signature (2,2). In 1969, he conjectured the cosmic censorship hypothesis. This proposes (rather informally) that the universe protects us from the inherent unpredictability of singularities (such as the one in the centre of a black hole) by hiding them from our view behind an event horizon.
This form is now known as the "weak censorship hypothesis"; in 1979,
Penrose formulated a stronger version called the "strong censorship
hypothesis". Together with the BKL conjecture and issues of nonlinear stability, settling the censorship conjectures is one of the most important outstanding problems in general relativity. Also from 1979 dates Penrose's influential Weyl curvature hypothesis on the initial conditions of the observable part of the Universe and the origin of the second law of thermodynamics.[6]
Penrose and James Terrell independently realised that objects
travelling near the speed of light will appear to undergo a peculiar
skewing or rotation. This effect has come to be called the Terrell rotation or Penrose–Terrell rotation.[7][8]

A Penrose tiling

Penrose is well known for his 1974 discovery of Penrose tilings, which are formed from two tiles that can only tile
the plane nonperiodically, and are the first tilings to exhibit
fivefold rotational symmetry. Penrose developed these ideas based on the
article Deux types fondamentaux de distribution statistique[9] (1938; an English translation Two Basic Types of Statistical Distribution) by Czech geographer, demographer and statistician Jaromír Korčák. In 1984, such patterns were observed in the arrangement of atoms in quasicrystals.[10] Another noteworthy contribution is his 1971 invention of spin networks, which later came to form the geometry of spacetime in loop quantum gravity. He was influential in popularising what are commonly known as Penrose diagrams (causal diagrams).

In 1983, Penrose was invited to teach at Rice University in Houston,
by the then provost Bill Grodon. Roger Penrose worked at Rice University
form 1983 to 1987.[11]

An earlier universe

In 2010, Penrose reported possible evidence, based on concentric circles found in WMAP data of the CMB sky, of an earlier universe existing before the Big Bang of our own present universe.[14] He mentions this evidence in the epilogue of his 2010 book Cycles of Time,[15] a book in which he presents his reasons, to do with Einstein's field equations, the Weyl curvature C, and the Weyl curvature hypothesis,
that the transition at the Big Bang could have been smooth enough for a
previous universe to survive it. He made several conjectures about C
and the WCH, some of which were subsequently proved by others, and the
smoothness is real. In simple terms, he believes that the singularity in
Einstein's field equation at the Big Bang is only an apparent singularity, similar to the well-known apparent singularity at the event horizon of a black hole. The latter singularity can be removed by a change of coordinate system,
and Penrose proposes a different change of coordinate system that will
remove the singularity at the big bang. This was a daring step, relying
on certain conjectures being proved, but these have subsequently been
proved.[citation needed] One implication of this is that the major events at the Big Bang can be understood without unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics, and therefore we are not necessarily constrained by the Wheeler–DeWitt equation, which disrupts time.

Physics and consciousness

Prof. Penrose at a conference.

Penrose has written books on the connection between fundamental physics and human (or animal) consciousness. In The Emperor's New Mind
(1989), he argues that known laws of physics are inadequate to explain
the phenomenon of consciousness. Penrose proposes the characteristics
this new physics may have and specifies the requirements for a bridge
between classical and quantum mechanics (what he calls correct quantum gravity). Penrose uses a variant of Turing's halting theorem to demonstrate that a system can be deterministic without being algorithmic.
(For example, imagine a system with only two states, ON and OFF. If the
system's state is ON when a given Turing machine halts and OFF when the
Turing machine does not halt, then the system's state is completely
determined by the machine; nevertheless, there is no algorithmic way to
determine whether the Turing machine stops.)

Penrose believes that such deterministic yet non-algorithmic processes may come into play in the quantum mechanical wave function reduction,
and may be harnessed by the brain. He argues that the present computer
is unable to have intelligence because it is an algorithmically
deterministic system. He argues against the viewpoint that the rational
processes of the mind are completely algorithmic and can thus be duplicated by a sufficiently complex computer. This contrasts with supporters of strong artificial intelligence, who contend that thought can be simulated algorithmically. He bases this on claims that consciousness transcends formal logic because things such as the insolubility of the halting problem and Gödel's incompleteness theorem
prevent an algorithmically based system of logic from reproducing such
traits of human intelligence as mathematical insight. These claims were
originally espoused by the philosopher John Lucas of Merton College, Oxford.

The Penrose/Lucas argument about the implications of Gödel's
incompleteness theorem for computational theories of human intelligence
has been widely criticised by mathematicians, computer scientists and
philosophers, and the consensus among experts in these fields seems to
be that the argument fails, though different authors may choose
different aspects of the argument to attack.[16]Marvin Minsky,
a leading proponent of artificial intelligence, was particularly
critical, stating that Penrose "tries to show, in chapter after chapter,
that human thought cannot be based on any known scientific principle."
Minsky's position is exactly the opposite – he believes that humans are,
in fact, machines, whose functioning, although complex, is fully
explainable by current physics. Minsky maintains that "one can carry
that quest [for scientific explanation] too far by only seeking new
basic principles instead of attacking the real detail. This is what I
see in Penrose's quest for a new basic principle of physics that will
account for consciousness."[17]

Penrose and Hameroff have argued that consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in microtubules, which they dubbed Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction). Max Tegmark, in a paper in Physical Review E,[18] calculated that the time scale of neuron firing and excitations in microtubules is slower than the decoherence
time by a factor of at least 10,000,000,000. The reception of the paper
is summed up by this statement in Tegmark's support: "Physicists
outside the fray, such as IBM's John A. Smolin,
say the calculations confirm what they had suspected all along. 'We're
not working with a brain that's near absolute zero. It's reasonably
unlikely that the brain evolved quantum behavior'".[19] Tegmark's paper has been widely cited by critics of the Penrose–Hameroff position.

In their reply to Tegmark's paper, also published in Physical Review E, the physicists Scott Hagan, Jack Tuszynski and Hameroff[20][21]
claimed that Tegmark did not address the Orch-OR model, but instead a
model of his own construction. This involved superpositions of quanta
separated by 24 nm rather than the much smaller separations stipulated
for Orch-OR. As a result, Hameroff's group claimed a decoherence time
seven orders of magnitude greater than Tegmark's, but still well short
of the 25 ms required if the quantum processing in the theory was to be
linked to the 40 Hz gamma synchrony, as Orch-OR suggested. To bridge
this gap, the group made a series of proposals. It was supposed that the
interiors of neurons could alternate between liquid and gel
states. In the gel state, it was further hypothesized that the water
electrical dipoles are oriented in the same direction, along the outer
edge of the microtubule tubulin subunits. Hameroff et al. proposed that
this ordered water could screen any quantum coherence within the tubulin
of the microtubules from the environment of the rest of the brain. Each
tubulin also has a tail extending out from the microtubules, which is
negatively charged, and therefore attracts positively charged ions. It
is suggested that this could provide further screening. Further to this,
there was a suggestion that the microtubules could be pumped into a
coherent state by biochemical energy.

Finally, it is suggested that the configuration of the microtubule
lattice might be suitable for quantum error correction, a means of
holding together quantum coherence in the face of environmental
interaction. In the last decade, some researchers who are sympathetic to
Penrose's ideas have proposed an alternative scheme for quantum
processing in microtubules based on the interaction of tubulin tails
with microtubule-associated proteins, motor proteins and presynaptic
scaffold proteins. These proposed alternative processes have the
advantage of taking place within Tegmark's time to decoherence.

Hameroff, in a lecture in part of a Google Tech talks series exploring quantum biology, gave an overview of current research in the area, and responded to subsequent criticisms of the Orch-OR model.[22]
In addition to this, a recent 2011 paper by Roger Penrose and Stuart
Hameroff gives an updated model of their Orch-OR theory, in light of
criticisms, and discusses the place of consciousness within the
universe.[23]

Phillip Tetlow, although himself supportive of Penrose's views,
acknowledges that Penrose's ideas about the human thought process are at
present a minority view in scientific circles, citing Minsky's
criticisms and quoting science journalist Charles Seife's
description of Penrose as "one of a handful of scientists" who believe
that the nature of consciousness suggests a quantum process.[19]

In January 2014 Hameroff and Penrose announced that a discovery of
quantum vibrations in microtubules by Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the
National Institute for Materials Science in Japan[24] confirms the hypothesis of Orch-OR theory.[25]
A reviewed and updated version of the theory was published along with
critical commentary and debate in the March 2014 issue of Physics of Life Reviews.[26]

Personal life

Family life

Penrose is married to Vanessa Thomas, head of mathematics at Abingdon School,[27][28] with whom he has one son.[27] He has three sons from a previous marriage to American Joan Isabel Wedge, whom he married in 1959. He is the elder brother of Jonathan Penrose, the chessplayer.

Religious views

Penrose does not hold to any religious doctrine,[29] and refers to himself as an atheist.[30] In the film A Brief History of Time,
he said, "I think I would say that the universe has a purpose, it's not
somehow just there by chance ... some people, I think, take the view
that the universe is just there and it runs along – it's a bit like it
just sort of computes, and we happen somehow by accident to find
ourselves in this thing. But I don't think that's a very fruitful or
helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something
much deeper about it."[31] Penrose is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

His deep work on General Relativity has been a major factor in our understanding of black holes. His development of Twistor Theory
has produced a beautiful and productive approach to the classical
equations of mathematical physics. His tilings of the plane underlie the
newly discovered quasi-crystals.[34]

About Me

My formal training is in chemistry. I also read a great deal of physics and biology. In fact I very much enjoy reading in general, mostly science, but also some fiction and history. I also enjoy computer programming and writing. I like hiking and exploring nature. I also enjoy people; not too much in social settings, but one on one; also, people with interesting or "off-beat" minds draw me to them. I also have some interest in Buddhism.

These days I get a lot more information from the internet, primarily through Wiki. Some television, e. g., documentaries, PBS shows like "Nova" and "Nature".

My favorite science writers are Jacob Bronowski ("The Ascent of Man") and Richard Dawkins (his "The Blind Watchmaker" is right up there up Ascent). I also have a favorite writer on Buddhism, Pema Chodron. Favorite films are "Annie Hall" (by Woody Allen), "The Maltese Falcon", "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", "As Good As It Gets", "Conspiracy Theory", Monty Python's "Search For The Holy Grail" and "Life of Brian", and a few others which I can't think about at the moment.

I love a number of classical works (Beethoven's "Pastoral", "Afternoon Of A Fawn" and "Clair De Lune" by Debussey , Pachelbel's "Canon" come to mind. My favorite piece is probably Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue". But I also enjoy a great deal in modern music, including many jazz pieces, folk songs by people like Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, a hodgepodge of pieces by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Niel Young, and practically everything the Beatles wrote.

My life over the last few years has been in some disarray, but I am finally "getting it together.". As I am very much into the sciences and writing, I would like to move more in this direction. I also enjoy teaching. As for my political leanings, most people would probably describe as basically liberal, though not extremely so. My religious leanings are to the absolutely none: I've alluded to my interest in Buddhism, but again this is not any supernatural or scientifically untested aspect of it but in the way it provides a powerful philosophy and set of practical, day to day methods of dealing with myself and the other human beings.